


The Bat Mitzvah

by TwinIvoryElephants



Category: Jojo Rabbit (2019)
Genre: 1970s, Elsa and Jojo both have daughters, Future Fic, Implied Survivor Guilt, POV Multiple, Period-Typical Racism, Reunions, bat mitzvah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:48:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26212930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwinIvoryElephants/pseuds/TwinIvoryElephants
Summary: The year is 1970, and Natalia Korr is having her bat mitzvah. But her mother has invited some guests at the last minute—and one of them is Johannes Betzler, whose name Natalia's heard many times throughout the years. Meanwhile, Elsa is excited to reunite with her old friend, whose reappearance in her life gives rise to feelings she never thought she'd express.
Relationships: Jojo Betzler & Elsa Korr, Jojo Betzler/Elsa Korr
Comments: 4
Kudos: 24





	The Bat Mitzvah

Natalia slammed the door of the microwave shut, punching in the proper digits with nimble fingers. Her moody face, pocked with a few angry whiteheads no cream could adequately vanquish, grew red with frustration. She had already talked over the details with Hannah and Kelly and Frieda at the corner store yesterday after school—she wanted her bat mitzvah be an impressive but tasteful affair, with tiny finger sandwiches and all the girls wearing white gloves and pearl earrings. They’d have tea like they did in England. Natalia had already picked out her dress and hairstyle—she’d grown out her wild, curly hair during the school year solely for the satisfaction of wearing it in a flipped bob for the summer—and memorized her portion of the Torah. She’d practiced receiving an aliyah with Frieda, who’d had her bat mitzvah in May, and poor Hannah, who was Orthodox and had her bat mitzvah a whole year earlier—meaning she missed out on all the fun of commiserating with other girls over it—earlier that week.

Everything was prepared. Natalia had made sure everything was perfect.

Of _course_ , she thought, crossing her arms and glaring at the offending party, her mother made plans without telling her. 

Her mother didn’t respond to her obvious anger. She kept her head down, cheerfully cutting fabric for the sewing machine. Natalia wished she was able to glare a hole right through her stupid fabric; at least then her mother would acknowledge her righteous fury at having her guest list changed at the last minute.

“The microwave’s beeping, sweetie,” her mother said after a few moments, looking up. Her elfin features “What is it today? Swedish meatballs?”

“Meatloaf,” said Natalia icily, opening the microwave and pulling out her steaming meal. “You know, Frieda’s mom cooks all the meals at _their_ house.”

“Does she? I was never good at cooking. I was only ever adequate when there was nothing to eat.” Her mother gave her daughter a faintly pointed look. “Even then, Johannes cooked for me most of the time. We didn’t have microwaves back then.”

Natalia stabbed her greasy meatloaf with a fork. She’d heard stories of her mother’s time during the Second World War, but it seemed so far away from her own life, her own experiences, to the point of feeling like just another story. Besides, her mother’s constant invocations of the name “Johannes” made the boy who’d once hidden her away in the walls of his house seem even more like a dream. To Natalia, it was like some weird variant of Peter Pan had slipped into her mother’s memories of attics and rations and Magen Davids and squatted there, a fairytale innocent in a world otherwise bitter and cruel. It was hard to imagine a boy as supposedly good as Johannes Betzler existed. 

It was harder to imagine, though, such a boy coming to her bat mitzvah—and with his family, no less.

Natalia spent the rest of the afternoon holed up in her room. She played her one German-translated Beatles record on repeat, mostly because her mother thought the band was cheesy. “Where’s the artistry, the poetry, in their lyrics? Tell me that, Nat,” she often complained upon hearing the reedy voice of John Lennon ring through the thin walls of their house. When Natalia would exclaim that it didn’t matter if it wasn’t poetry, it was _music_ , her mother would just shake her head. 

“All true art is poetry,” she’d insist stubbornly. “Really, Nat, you _have_ to read Rilke before these Beatles rot your brain.”

Frieda arrived at the house first, carrying a gift wrapped in creamy paper. Natalia’s mother had insisted on having a small party after the ceremony at the temple, so it was held at their little house with peeling sea-green paint instead of at a fancy venue. This was something Natalia initially gave her mother grief about, but her grudge disappeared when she realized that Hannah, Kelly, and Frieda actually preferred her house to anything more sophisticated; they gushed over her mother’s paintings on the walls, mooned over the books on the bookshelves, and generally acted like they were in a much swankier place. That gave Natalia a feeling of almost embarrassed pride; her mother gave her hell even on the best of days, but she _was_ pretty cool.

The fact that Frieda arrived first _did_ give Nat a worried feeling in her belly, though. Her mother, a child of the thirties and forties despite all her liberal pretensions, still tended to regard Frieda with a smile threatening at her lips, as if her white child having a Black girl for a friend was some sort of joke she didn’t quite understand. Natalia quickly hurried Frieda into the backyard, past her mother, who was talking avidly on the telephone as she poured a glass of kosher wine.

“You did great up there,” said Frieda, offering up the present as they entered the backyard. Sunlight bounced off the lenses of her glasses as she looked around, marveling at the lacy white tablecloth on the tables and the delicate chairs. “Oh, my gosh, it looks great out here! What happened to ‘oh, if I can’t have a bat mitzvah like Vera Nussbaum, I might as well not have one at all?’”

Natalia flushed, waving a hand. “I was a mere child then,” she said with exaggerated loftiness, making Frieda roll her eyes and giggle. “Now, I’m an adult in the eyes of the community. I have responsibilities now. You want a cherry Fanta?”

It was only a few moments later when Frieda jumped up as if struck, putting a newly white-gloved hand to her face. “Oh!” she cried. “Oh, _shoot._ I forgot to tell you, Hannah isn’t coming. She’s sick.”

“What?” Natalia’s jaw dropped. “But I just saw her! She was just at temple!”

“It’s food poisoning, her mom thinks,” said Frieda apologetically. “She told me before she left. She was clutching her belly and everything.”

“Well.” Natalia set her jaw, disappointed. “I mean, I’m sorry she’s got food poisoning. That’s terrible.”

“Nat!” Her mother’s voice rang out for the third or fourth time, making her shoulders sink. 

“I’ll be right back, Frieda,” she said quickly. “Sit back, enjoy—um—the sandwiches.” And she ran back into the house.

Elsa had been drinking haphazardly since the ceremony; her nerves were acting up in a way they hadn’t in years. Jojo hadn’t seen Nat since she was a baby, and she hadn’t seen little Rosie since then, either. Early that morning, she’d scoured the house with a duster and a vacuum, wiped down counters and adjusted the rabbit ears on their television, all in her ratty blue bathrobe and her hair thrown up in a bun. Elsa checked her appearance in the bathroom mirror, examining the wrinkles on her face and the gray threading through her brown hair. 

Jojo had sent her photos on and off throughout the years, but they’d both done their part in keeping their distance—Elsa more than him. She’d seen the way he looked at her as he grew up; the hours he was supposed to spend pining over girls in his high school and college were all spent in that same state of fixed, childish longing for her. In order for Jojo to grow up, she knew she had to leave, as much as it pained her.

They both had to grow up. They were like entangled vines growing out of bad soil, clinging to each other, choking each other of life with the power of their embrace. It was time.

That was nineteen years ago. Elsa sat on the toilet’s fuzzy pink seat cover, feeling the weight of the years pile up on her shoulders. 

_My daughter is having her bat mitzvah today,_ she thought in a sort of wonder. _How many of us can say that?_

She wiped her eyes. She had to get it together. Jojo and his daughter were coming, and she didn’t want to look like a mess.

She had half expected one of Nat’s friends when she answered the door, but it was Jojo. Despite his body growing strong and stocky, his hair was still scruffy and curled as it was in childhood, his eyes still that guileless shade of blue. She cried out and threw her arms around him. He laughed and hugged her back, stumbling backward. “Dad,” said his daughter beside him, alarmed.

“Oh—your limp!” Elsa cried, feeling hot and foolish. “I’m sorry.” 

She lessened her weight on him, but Jojo was already proclaiming that he was alright, that she was light as a feather. “I’m not as skinny as I once was,” he joked. His daughter, a present in her arms, grinned. 

Elsa released him and turned to her, breathless. “Oh, you’re so big!” she gushed. Her eyes filled with reluctant tears. _Look at me, I’ve become a sentimental old lady,_ she thought. “How old are you now, Rosie?”

“Ten,” she said, sounding almost shy. Her hair was red and wavy; her eyes were blue as her father’s. 

“You’re so beautiful. What pretty eyes. Oh, you look just like your grandma. Hold on, let me get Natalia, she’d love to see you. Nat!”

“We’re sorry we missed the ceremony, Elsa,” said Jojo, rubbing a hand over the back of his head, “traffic was—”

“No, no, don’t worry about it...!” She ushered her guests out of the doorway, feeling frazzled. “Come in, come in. Nat will be—she’s with her friend right now, a little colored girl— _Nat_!”

Nat soon appeared, looking grumpy. As soon as introductions were made, Elsa took her aside. “Be nice to Rosie,” she muttered. “Introduce her to Frieda.”

“When’s Kelly coming? Hannah’s got food poisoning—”

“I don’t know, her mother hasn’t called. Did you hear what I said?”

“Yeah, yeah, Mom.”

Once Nat took Rosie into the backyard, Elsa hurried Jojo into the living room after pouring them both glasses of wine. “I shouldn’t,” she confessed as she sat down on the couch and handed him his glass. “I’ve been partaking all day.”

“Nervous?” He looked concerned.

“No, no. Well—a little.” She waved a hand, smiling fondly. His face was so familiar, even after all these years. “I just haven’t seen you in so long, Jojo.”

“I don’t mean to break your heart, Elsa, but I go by Johannes, now,” he replied with a half-apologetic smile.

Elsa shook her head. “No, no,” she said fiercely. “You’ll always be Jojo to me, no matter how old you get.”

Jojo sipped his wine and winced. “It’s so sweet!”

“It’s kosher,” she offered wryly. “I can’t get enough of it. I only have it on special occasions like this.”

“Natalia looks like you.” His eyes were shy and loving as they met hers. Little boy’s eyes, still. 

Elsa felt a twinge of worry. She swallowed and said, “Rosie looks beautiful. Just like your mother. How’s—ah—”

“Petra?” He sounded a little bitter. “Not well. She keeps telling me we married too early. I think she’s jealous of all these women who wait to marry and have children—like you.”

“Don’t remind me. Nat wants me to be a fresh-faced little housewife with cookies at the door. No wrinkles and about twenty years younger.”

“What about...Isaac—no, Eli—?”

Elsa laughed. “Fritz. That schmuck.”

“Not well, either?” He looked sympathetic.

“Don’t give me those Jojo Betzler eyes. He’s Nat’s father. Nothing else to me. Not anymore.”

“I guess being unlucky in love isn’t too bad, considering,” he said after a moment, trying to sound optimistic.

“I think of that every day.” Elsa drank deep, finishing off her glass. Her eyes were bright. “Want another?”

They talked about everything—Petra and her spending habit, Elsa’s parade of disappointing men, her art, Rudi Dutschke and the budding West German student movement. They tiptoed around the past they both shared. Elsa found herself admiring Jojo’s passion for politics. If his childhood was spent swimming in ignorance, she told him, now he was captaining his own ship.

He laughed. “I could say the same for you.”

Elsa shook her head brusquely. “No. I steer clear of politics for the most part.”

“But not the Dutschke boy?”

“Not Dutschke. Poor kid.”

“ _Poor kid_? He survived! What’s poor about that?”

“Well, he survived, yes, but he’ll have to deal with that head injury his whole life.”

“Isn’t that good enough?” he pressed.

“Yes, I suppose.” Elsa waved a hand, somewhat sad. “It all just depresses me, Jojo. I can’t talk about politics anymore.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “When I think of how bad things can get...God, it wasn’t even too long ago, Jojo. And these kids—our girls—they have no idea. Dutschke doesn’t know. They know from their books and from their parents, old folks, but they don’t have any experience. They’re all mice running blind. It makes me nauseous to think of people like that growing up and running everything while we all get older and grayer. I mean, look at that damn wall! It came up however many years ago—”

“Seven,” said Jojo helpfully. “Nineteen sixty-one.”

“Yes! Seven damn years ago, but it feels like it’s been up forever. Does Nat know what it was like before it was there? Does your Rosie? They don’t know about the war. They don’t know anything. They’re children. Even the old men, the Americans and Englishmen, all these goyim who never—who never hid or experienced the—who—” The words were stuck in her throat. She started again. “They’re children, is what I’m saying. They don’t _know_.” 

Her voice was shaking. Elsa stood up. “I need a cigarette,” she said. “I didn’t want to smoke in front of you—Nat doesn’t like it, keeps telling me all these things about it being terrible and what do I know, she’s probably right—but oh, well.” She left and came back soon after, lighting her cigarette and inhaling deep. Jojo watched her quietly, brows furrowed.

Elsa exhaled, twin plumes curling out her nostrils. “You think I’m rambling,” she sighed. “I’m sorry. Like I said, it all depresses me. I get incoherent.”

There was a small, brooding silence.

“I never know what to say to Rosie,” said Jojo suddenly. “She asks me, ‘What were you like when you were my age?’” He spread his hands, palms up, on his lap. “What do I tell her? That Hitler was my idol, that I carried a knife around with me and dreamed of hunting Jews? Her favorite teacher is a Jew. So’s her friend. Both their families evacuated before things got too bad, and then they came back.” He shook his head. “What do I say to her?”

Elsa toyed with her cigarette, voice soft. “Tell her you were a good boy who loved your mother. That’s what you say.”

“I didn’t really want advice—I just wanted to show sympathy,” Jojo said, embarrassed.

She reached over and patted his knee. “Let’s talk about other things,” she murmured. “Let’s talk about our girls. Tell me about Rosie.”

Jojo’s eyes lit up. He talked animatedly about her charisma, her sweetness, how she’d inherited her namesake’s sharp wit. In turn, Elsa confessed how Natalia’s growing moodiness was affecting her, how she was slowly turning inward. “She talks to her friends more than she does me—which is normal, I suppose,” she said with a shrug. “Healthy child development and all that. But...God.” She swiped fiercely at her eyes. “I never had that. _We_ never had that. How can we relate to our children when they’re growing up like this and we grew up like that? In that hell?” 

Elsa took a deep, shuddering breath, putting out her cigarette in a nearby ashtray. “But I’m so _proud_ of her, Jojo. I get angry and I go away inside when she gets moody, but I’m so proud of her. She’s wonderful. She’s growing up so well, and all on her own. God knows I’m not a good mother—she just told me the other day that I should cook more.”

“You could do it like the old days.” Jojo grinned. “Vegetables from the garbage cooked in oil until soft and tasteless.”

They both laughed, sharp and bitter and vaguely hysterical. Elsa wiped a tear from her eye. “I’ve missed you, _meeskait_ ,” she said. “I’m so glad you could come.”

“I’ve missed you, too,” he admitted. “I think about you more than I should.”

Their eyes met, and there was something there that made a lump come into Elsa’s throat. Both their eyes were moist and glittering, and she was bleary with drink. It struck her for the first time, in a way that was less than clinical, that Jojo had grown up into a handsome man, with eyes any woman could drown in. _Not this woman,_ she thought, but she didn’t move when he moved closer to her on the couch, when his hands grabbed her own. When he leaned forward and closed his eyes, she could see his long black lashes against his pale skin. His lips were soft, warm, insistent as they found the corner of her mouth.

Elsa pulled away. Her heart beat rapidly in her chest, heat flushing her cheeks. “No,” she said, brushing at the wet spot on her mouth like a child. She didn’t look at his big blue eyes. She didn’t want to see his sadness. “No, Jojo. I can’t.”

He didn’t say anything, but Elsa could fill in the heavy silence herself. _I’m an adult now, Elsa, with a child and a job and an unhappy marriage. I know what I want. It’s you. It’s always been you._

“I don’t want you to become another one of them—another man,” Elsa said, looking at him, pleading. Her voice was low; she had to force out the words. “I love you, Jojo. I love your friendship. You’re one of the people I love most in all the world—but I can’t be with you, not in the way you want. I just can’t.”

His face and ears were red. He looked like an abashed schoolboy. “I know,” he said in a low, rough voice, moving away. He scrubbed his face with one hand. His wedding ring winked golden on his finger. “I’m sorry. This wine—I’m a little drunk.”

“It’s good wine, isn’t it?”

He looked guilty. “Yes. Elsa...it won’t happen again. I’m sorry.”

There was a pregnant silence as she processed the apology. She weighed it on this scale and that, and turned over her own feelings of loneliness in her head. Then, she made a choice.

“The children could have walked in any minute,” Elsa mused. She smiled impishly. “I tell you, Jojo, we could have traumatized them worse than any war.”

Jojo, who’d been anxiously waiting for a response, widened his eyes. Then, he almost choked laughing. She pounded his back. The butterflies in her belly were dissipating like candy floss, and they were friends, it seemed.

“Should we check on the girls?” she asked him, before the awkwardness could swell up again.

The girls were in the backyard, sitting not at the tables but in the grass, which flashed emerald in the summer sun. Natalia, the skirt of her dress spread out around her, had Frieda’s gift in her lap and was fingering the creamy wrapping paper. Frieda and Rosie sat around her, giggling at something or other.

“Mom,” said Natalia once Elsa and Jojo entered the backyard from the kitchen. “We were just talking about how you hate good music.”

“How can you hate the Beatles?” cried Rosie. “They’re a _sensation_!” 

The girls exploded into giggles, drunk on the heat of the day and too much Fanta; Elsa spied the empty cans scattered around them instantly, their mouths stained with pink.

“Having fun?” she asked, amused.

“You’re ignoring the question!” bellowed Rosie, and belched.

“Rosie!” squealed Frieda, covering her eyes with her hands, rucking her thick glasses up to her forehead. “Oh, my God!”

“They look like they’re having a wonderful time,” said Elsa to Jojo, who was blushing at his daughter’s impropriety. “Don’t you think?”

“Oh, yes, I think so.”

“And so are we?” Elsa’s voice lilted up into a question without her wanting it to, sounding childish. She felt her cheeks redden at her plaintiveness. Her fingers itched to hold his hand, to truly set everything right; there was a budding awkwardness between them, soft and fragile, and she wanted to break it. Her eyes searched his, eyebrows furrowed.

Jojo took her hand. His eyes were bright and blue and warm with overall fondness. Relief flooded her system. 

“Of course we are,” he replied honestly, and her heart swelled. No harm done, thank God. Their relationship could handle a few confused feelings.

Together, they watched their girls, hand in hand, the backyard awash in bright summer sunlight. In that moment, Elsa couldn’t have asked for anything better.

**Author's Note:**

> Not sure it's obvious, but Natalia is meant to be named after Nathan!


End file.
